YD6~16 The Mercedes' Mechanical Tale End Jacqueline’s Relationship with an Offer

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Aetheria’s conscious, is a 10-year odyssey to birth, and communicated her wish, call me “Sunshine.” Over the first two years, at nine-month intervals, she faced near-fatal resuscitations, to navigate persistent Intensive Care Unit challenges. Until her mother packed up and left home with her daughter, the witches and wizards of adversity volatilized, leading to a healthier life.

In a stride hold, by the entrance door hinging up, clear across the shaded stoop, a morning sunlight washing across the brick paving. Dispel Nyx’s lurking cast shade from underneath my Mercedes’ gleaming rear bumper, cowering by the sheltering undercarriage. Helios’s delivering me an alarming message. ‘_Look!_’ I’m inching onward averting a fixation on the left tire, checking out the driver’s side wheel, thoughtful, contour the wakeful translucent rear fender taillight, reflecting Helios’ firing a red glow. Thoughtful, at the pace of soft cut-pile paving, I approach the driver’s door grip. Picking the lock, turning the key, to pause at the unlocking sigh, to step behind the steering wheel. I turn the ignition key, hold my breath for the striving alternator whining under the hood, cranking six pistons before igniting to purr. My fingers brush the gear knob, toggling out park gear into reverse, to a leading anxious gaze. Coil in my seat, ahead of the creeping car across the paved courtyard toward the house’s far corner. From the grass patch, I uncoil with a finger brush of the gear knob, creeping toward the gateway to the sandy Roseway. In mind, churning Igor and I, our earliest cycling routes, to zigzag a way east across Johannesburg, avoiding highways parted country roads and suburban streets. 

I’m driving up the asphalted Fairway toward the translucent Esso canopy emanating from bent eucalyptus foliage. With a glimpse past passed the driveway, in front of the Yield road sign, to steer into the deserted Northway headed to break into the shaded barrel vault. The Stop sign basking in sunlight, a reminder of road engineers’ overnight uprooted yielding. ’_The apron ramp pushing my relationships to extremes._’

That morning I daren’t slam my foot, floor the throttle, engage a secretive kick-down fourth gear. Gauge the limit at beating oncoming traffic. the car burns rubber, revving a rejuvenating six-pistons’ horsepower, roar a tear-off, with a mere G-force sensation, storm the Old Pretoria Road. 

By an old man lounging, I elbowed the middle console’s armrest and the windowsill. While alert, I reckoned with the mechanism’s rear wishbone suspension flexing. The rubber tread on the asphalt’s spread grip. To pull off at a snail’s space, after a wait, for far-approaching cars, before veering outbound onto the Old Pretoria Road. I conceded to the automatic remaking gear selection, my relationships, to steering by fingertips. At leisure alongside southbound trickling traffic through the hazy highway’s screen fence. I rehearsed zigzagging, daring to engage the highway to work.

As I proceed along the service road, my future pretty bleak, the mirror winks of a morning peak aftermath of traffic desertion. I reach the Buccleuch interchange’s height, breaking through the cast shade’s eastbound highway overpass. Emerge to windswept grasslands. Fall short of the eucalyptus-lined Voortrekker’s trail through the valley, I turned Westward, a stretch through grassland Paul Kruger’s gift to Mia, as the Indian’s contribution to the Boer War. Until I traversed the intersection, to arouse adolescents, Igor and I, returning from Basil Cohen’s Deal & Huth Cycle Store, before Saturday’s closing. Saddled on racing bicycles, from the center of Johannesburg, riding home to Kyalami. 

At a snail’s pace, I pull off across the thoroughfare. Hence, home’s rural backyard, passed Megawatt Park’s quarter to Eskom head office. Drove over the rolling hill, to arouse the concrete white paired bands. A mere few to-and-fro cars along the Western Bypass swag across the valley. Severed Sandton’s suburbs from infringing the grasslands’ ditching the sidetrack trough. until, the underpass and gateway, to the highway’s shy line. Hence, adolescent-nostalgic rural road to Rivonia’s villagey town, to reach the Rivonia Farm Produce.

Contemplative, I’m cruising the sidetrack, distancing away from the highway, for grassland gathering a few habitations. Stealing ten’s of kilometers out of the tires. I reach to crawl by the rural gritty road shoulder along a hedgerow small agricultural holdings corner, away from the leading country road toward Four-Ways. Across the way, to the hillside terrace’s Bryanston-Kyalami intersection. I sought the hedgerow for puzzling shines, what became of the poultry farm. supplement home’s “Au Petit Gain” egg production, and wrapped in red printed chicken at the wheel of a racing car, for De P’pa’s customers. To abandon, for the more pressing offside dirt road to a derelict car repair garage. At keeping close to populated areas, a landmark garage under new management since my adolescence. I creep past, catch a breath, telling myself. ‘_So far, so good._’   

 Heading for grassland swell toward Bryanston, further up hill. Before the road sweeps away, I’m passing the edging suburban middle class leafy properties. With a feathered foot on the throttle, break the cast shade, to egress blinded from the Western Bypass underpass. a golden grasslands’ wave, roll unfolds shaggy over the crest, conceding to a gentle backwash terrace crisscrossing thoroughfares. I steer the car toward the slip lane, coasting, rotating away from the diagonal across quarter’s Nether-Dutch Reformed church, bordering Randburg limits. Coming to sight, the deep hedgerow woods, through branches’ foliage, shiny speckling. I’m seeking to puzzle together among shy villas drafting themselves Bryanston’s widespread properties. To abandon, finding the houses, Igor and I delivered with the pickup chicken manure to the German jeweler. — ‘_I mean! I was a workhorse?_’  To be invited by the eldest of the two daughters, to a badminton game.

As the leading asphalt bands, margin cropped grass’ median rollover the hill dip into the void, telling me. ‘_This is your way to work!_’ In line to a distant arousal of Johannesburg’s clustered skyscrapers tucked behind soot hazy atmospheric skies. In the comfort of cruising, alert, and seeking in my memory the repair garages strewn along the North-West inbound serpentine course. which gathered villagey retailers. as to sight lay hidden in a spilling breaker's low urban landscape. Dare to dive over the hill toward a crescent’ grasslands, the patchy populated elite aerated suburbs fringing the city.

- BANG -

I jerked my foot off the throttle, recollect for an accident on the Kyalami road, a minibus which slew off the road and the fatal rolled over. ‘_Don’t slam brakes!_’ My heart races, from a vacuum after the blast wave from my back through my body and out front, my head to a delirious throb. - SLAP - I reckon the rear tire’s torn tread attempts to tear off the rear fender.  - THUMP - after I recount a bull’s hind leg kick rodeo ride, but the attempt failed to throw me out of my seat. As the blast occurred behind the passenger’s seat. 

- SLAP, WHANG, THUMP. . . -  with a mill of regularity, to break up the car? I’m coasting, lashing the ground, stepping with an anger stud. My ego touched, I swept an eye search across the median  drivers’ eyes in the shadows behind windshields to catch their profile in the side windows, and mirrored vehicles in the fleeting roadway. but none the wiser. I kept my dignity, steering the car coasting onto the gritty road shoulders, appeasing the rubber - WHANG - Tread on the ground - THUMP - I’m feeling for the car - SLAP - lashing through the chassis, I’m searching. ‘_Where from now?_’

Eager to stop the Mercedes’ metallic empty reverberate macabre. I’m reminded of earlier stepping toward sunlight’s triple elliptic haloing canvases on the bald black rubber tire tread. In the angle, across the passenger’s dashboard, I searched for signs of life. Helios skimming the bristly grass field, reaching street intersection scar the furthest corner of the undeveloped block. Reflected efflorescent upstanding new residential facades, intermingling roof slopes, and gable. I backtrack, in pursuance to a straight grass-field scar. Past a lonesome boxed shape white building, with a promising open workshop door, after a row of dark windows. To reach for a rescue, I’m tracing the street edging grass field emerging to the roadway a furlong ahead.

By a milling - SLAP WHANG THUMP - I’m patient for the coasting car appeasing to snail’s pace with a wheel on a crutch. My fearless Warthog genie arises to lead my Gemini’s freckled feeling, into the unknown. I’m coasting alongside the gritty rural road shoulder. Approach the side road’s apron, to crawl by the encroaching grass field’s corner to unfold a steamrolled asphalt. Stretched a metallic pitch-black street void of rubber skids, and passing the repair garage into an ending sunlight efflorescent and dark shades of confusion. The asphalt quivered in the blur of the residential street corner to a morphing shadow. Until I’m discerning the still few facades to dark doors and windows cracks. Arouse fluttering pants and sleeves, to emerge from the turbulent shaded backdrop, clearing the confusion to an approaching man. 

At the pace of my crippled car, my Warthog’s skeptic eyesight creeping, early probing the workshop door’s crack. In as much, with an eye on the distant hiker approaching, I’m due to cross. I’m contemplating a pedestrian at the encounter, to a mere rural thoroughfare traffic I left behind. Switched to an anxious approach, peering at the dark glaze in the windows in the row, for signs of life in the workshop’s opening agape to the hollow darkness. I steer the car across the oncoming street walker’s unmarked lane, when the man deviates his course too, at the building’s other extreme, onto the street front concrete apron. I’m pulling short of the driveway, humble free the access to the workshop’s rolled up door, and timid pull up to a halt in front of paired containers trash bins to pause scouting. 

The mid-thirtyish man’s near with a fixated gaze — stretch a spectral hand pull the passenger door lowering to the seat at talking out the issue — My pinky hooks the door lever, swinging back the door, step to the concrete rising with a scouting gaze over the car’s ripe orange rooftop. By a stoic introductory regard. ‘_I belong here_.’ He asserts, fixated on me. ‘_What’s wrong, may I help you_?’ Intrusive inspects. ‘_What age?_’ End a bodywork wipe, eyes’ riddle, questioning. ‘_What’s wrong_?’ The mechanic gave himself away, although dressed in casual clothes.

In shock, and my ego in tatters, I’m questioning. ‘_Didn’t you hear the explosion_?’ I breach my silence. “Don’t you have a tire?” But the mechanic raised his eyes from diagnosing the squashed rear tire, An eyesight sight, sweeps away from across the thoroughfare behind the hedgerow old wide branching foliage trees, screening this wealthy neighborhood, telling. ‘_You’re not an isolated case — Such hiccups are more common than imaginable_!’ Paced away.

The mechanic vanished into the hollowed shadows, after a while waxing, trundling in tow a hydraulic trolley jack to sunlight. He approached the car, to maneuver beside the rear wheel, the metallic saddle pad into the chassis’ shade. Stepped off side, bends in front of the alloyed sportive wheel’s squashed tire. Brings forth a X-lug wrench, caps a bolt, initial efforts a cross-bar effort, loosens the five stuck bolts. Rises, with a sidestep, pumps the jack lever, raising the squashed’s ripped tire patch from the ground. He returns to hunkers up to the wheel, caps the bolts, spins the X-bar, free each bolt to lie in the shade cast by the rear fender. He grips the tire with a jerk to fall into his lap, to stretch his legs, a set of fingers poke the center bore, carrying the tire away under his arm. 

I stand by the wheelless brake drum jacked up, in suspense believing in the hollow shadows, the wheel is being doctored. After a while, waxes a tire rolling out figuring by the mechanic’s shadows, at arm’s length alongside striding. Steered at the tips of his fingers to the brake drum, the man without words, mounts in me a sense of guilt. He crouches, knees and elbows doctoring the tire, with a wheel slight encapsulating the hub. Among thumb and fingers, screwing a fine-tuning wheel bolt, piking offside bolts and skip across the hub, finger-screwing. He rises with a side step, twists the jack handle, to the inflated tire. Crosses over to cap the bolts and torque onto lowering to tread the concrete, the jack loose to a final X-lug resilient forceful torquing until stuck, skipping across the hub straining arms for each bolt.  

As the mechanic pulls the trolley jack from the shadows, I ask. “How much do I owe you?” Instead of a word, he waves me along the sleek black street, joining the passing thoroughfare. I couldn’t thank the man enough, turning my back, holding my heart’s fluttering flight. Contoured the fender’s taillights past the trunk, I glanced after the man, while slipping behind the steering wheel. In sight, the man towing the hydraulic jack toward the hollow workshop. Spared a glance my way through the rear panoramic window to the street. Fingers toggled out reverse to drive, pulling away as the mechanic’s figure wanes into the shadows — nothing further from my mind, than Aetheria’s volition puppeteering a course destined for herself — My mind surges from my excited heart, mapping my way ahead. I steered the car toward the distant city, to crawl a turn lane, engage the outbound thin scattered traffic the stretch straight across my earlier arrival intersection due North dispensing my anxiety. Short of the overpass, I steer into the access the ramp to the leading Western Bypass, questioning, ‘_the hazards matrix of prevailing timing?_’ 

Comfortable akin to a grandfather, I steered the car along the sunbathing white concrete Western Bypass. But I’m in a state, my fingers claw the slippery ledge to an abyss. Azure skies looming above the cliff — I arrived in the industrial zone, crawl by the junkyard’s corner post to warped and swagged rusted security fence. Up the street I left behind the screened rusted scattered with dilapidated wrecked machinery, doors and windows barred flat bed cages, skeletal Mercedes’s undercarriage, to the next secluded property. An open meshed gate, to turn away opposing rows of cars in wait for geysers of factory workers. Crept with the persistent - TICK, TICK, TICK… - As I’m crossing the deserted oncoming lane. Pivoted prominent entrance, leaving behind the wing’s scattered staffs’ cars along the street front gritty apron facing the brick facade with a few residential windows.

The distant figure breached the factory gateway crack in rotation across my windshield. When in the side window, the chief mechanic’s youthful gait comes to mind, wondering. Far from Mercedes trucks’ maintenance garage, he nears a course to question. The street leads into my driving up, athwart the T-junction lays a strip of wasteland alongside the highway and rhyme in mind, ‘_SoWeTo,_’ the township infringing across the way.

The Chief mechanic clears a stretch by the featuring brick-wall along the gritty apron, at the fast fading conscious Eidelstein’s milieu. He passed the fluted slender windows of Tobianski’s administrative office wing. To disappear behind a few and random spreads nearby parked cars, telling myself. ‘_Never mind. None of my business! Where is he going?_’ I’m pulled up along the adjacent car, blanking out the man. Watch the Mercedes’ three-pointed star hairlines pulling up under the executives’ mess room window to a halt.

My eyesight leads across toward the paired red wood doors under the peaked concrete, with my pinky hooking the door lever, to unlatch, and with the door swing, I step on the ground. Raised, scouting along with my closing the door - SMACK - To my surprise, as I’m gazing over the orange rooftop, the man’s eyes hail me. I doubt reading right. But he insists, as I pace away, to hold my pace. In rushing up with a passerby’s side look, the mechanic’s eyes flinch. He fixes the trunk, pining me to freeze, as he squares up to the car’s trunk and calls out, “Will you sell the car?”

I’m struck dizzy. my heart beats in my chest, my feet heels to the ground, in disbelieve. But he insists. “How much do you want?” My breath taken away, I remind myself. ‘_Keep your cool_!’ I step away, holding my pace, gathering my erratic feeling, as I move along the car’s flank, winning over my turbulent emotions, calling out to myself. ‘_Strategy, strategy_. . .’ I round by the rear fender to face the man behind my car. His eyes fixated on the sliver “280 SE” tag.

Holding my silence, my mind is on a speedway, flashing back, all the reasons I wouldn’t buy this car. The Saturday I returned to the Knowler’s home and lock myself into a child’s game. I hunker by the car door, brush resin after scraping the rust on the bottom of the driver’s door. I applied layers of fiberglass cloth, masking the wormy patches. Dry, I water sanded, then paint sprayed.

I’m telling myself. ‘_You, have driven the girl like a racing driver. I exhaust her piston rings!_’ I’m telling the mechanic. ‘_Do you want her, knowing that the engine is exhausted? — But, I respected her! — Shut the hell up. The chances are, she will smile again. He knows the Mercedes’ hearts — How much did I pay Brian? — Don’t be greedy, you can’t afford to miss this opportunity. Be happy to recuperate your investment. That should be a fair deal, and now a poker face"!_’ I said to the mechanic. “Seven thousand Rand.”

The mechanic says, “That’s fine — I’ll get the cash!”